Using Blogging to Develop Writing Skills

Blogging is a literary and social tool that has been used in classrooms for many years.  Since the beginning of blogging, its uses have evolved and broadened in the educational setting.  One huge benefit for students who use blogging in their classrooms, especially ELLs, is that they improve and develop their writing skills.

Blogs can be incorporated into every type of classroom.  From young students, to high schoolers or from Art class to Science class, blogging proves to be a beneficial teaching strategy. During a study by Abdelaziz, it was found that  "writing skills and proficiency have shown improvement by active participation in blogs than by using traditional teaching" (Abdelaziz, 2011).  It is clear that blogging has a way of engaging the student in their learning process and in turn, provides them with a more in-depth learning outcome.  

Blogging is an instructional technology that is helpful for the general student population.  When it is used in the ESL classroom the benefits seem to be compounded.  After a few weeks of Blogging, ELLs, "showed considerably more fluency in the student's abilities to convey and formulate their ideas" (Abdelaziz, 2011).  ELLs that used blogging in their classrooms improved word spelling, word choice and paragraph stucture.      

When used in the classroom, the blogging process is helpful for the person who is writing the original post, but also for the students who are responding and commenting back to that person. Both parties have the opportunity to practice their language development. Blogging provides an open platform for feedback and, "the students not only expressed their opinions and ideas but also gave suggestions and advice for other groups" (Abdelaziz, 2011).  Students in this study reported that their most positive takeaways from using Blogging in the classroom was their ability to interact with other students and people reading their blogs, and also that these students now found and outlet for their writing. 

Since leaving my public education career, I no longer have a classroom to incorporate blogging into.  Instead, I am working as an Instructional Designer for a retail company.  As an Instructional Designer, I work to develop and implement different training programs and materials for our team members.  Blogging would work best in our curriculums in one of our several professional development programs.  One of our programs works with the assistant manager population, and gives them the skills needed to develop into a store manager.  Throughout this program, we can have our cohorts write blogs on different operational or leadership topics to upskill them into this new position.  I think that blogging would prove to be a very effective tool for our team members who are learning a new role. 

Sources:

Alrubail, R. (2015, March 16). Blogging for English-language learners. Edutopia. Retrieved November 4, 2022, from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/blogging-for-english-language-learners-rusul-alrubail

Chow, S. (2017, November 15). Classroom blogging step 1 – setting up a blog for your class. The Blog Starter. Retrieved November 6, 2022, from https://www.theblogstarter.com/classroom-blogging-step-1-setting-up-a-blog-for-your-class/

Fageeh, Abdelaziz. (2011). EFL learners' use of blogging for developing writing skills and enhancing attitudes towards English learning: An exploratory study. Journal of Language and Literature. 2. 31-48.